Applications in Manufacturing Industries

Car Manufacturing

• Very accurate fast production.
• Removes humans from dangerous jobs.
• Caused mass unemployment.
• Major safety issues are missed due to rapid up-scaling of production ( e.g. Toyota)

CPU Manufacturing

• Far too small for a human to make by hand
• Whole process needs to be 100% clean, therefore a hermetically sealed environment is needed.
• The whole process needs to be 100% exact or the processor will fail.

3D Printing

Advantages

• Can be used for low volume, bespoke items, adapted from a template.
• Very cheap to print plastic objects (compared to injection moulding)

Disadvantages

• Not very accurate so far.
• Slow printing times, so not good for high volumes.

Pros and Cons of ICT

Advantages of ICT in manufacturing

• Very fast and accurate production
• Don’t get sick / need holidays / sleep
• Don’t often make errors (but when they do they are multiplied by thousands…)
• Some items (cars / trucks) are too heavy for humans to lift by hand.
• Dangerous / hazardous jobs ( spray painting) can be done by robots.

Disadvantages

• Very high setup costs
• Long lead time

Activity

Create an A3 poster showing how ICT is used in the manufacturing industry.